City of North Las Vegas
An artist’s rendering of the planned North Las Vegas Downtown Library, which is scheduled to open in early 2021.
Friday, June 7, 2019 | 2 a.m.
North Las Vegas has approved buying three parcels of property for a $15 million Educational and Experimental Campus that will include a new library and a 4-acre park.
The purchase agreement for the lots along Williams Avenue was unanimously approved Wednesday during a joint meeting of the City Council and Redevelopment Agency. Sparton Gaming LLC owns the land and agreed to sell it to the city Redevelopment Agency for $320,166.
Completion of the full project is estimated for 2023 or 2024, but the library is set to open in the first quarter of 2021.
Design work on the 10,000-square-foot, two-story building is nearly complete. It will include a traditional library for adults and children on the ground floor, with resources for workforce development and a “makerspace” where people can work on projects on the second floor.
“Our libraries are hubs for internet access, for education tutoring and small-business entrepreneurs,” city Economic Development Director Gina Gavan said. “We use our hubs as sort of these small-business incubators to be able to encourage people to learn and grow and do better things.”
The city also plans to renovate the shuttered Washington Continuation School and use it as a “flexible space for maybe an art gallery, artist-in-residence program or a space for public meetings or makerspace,” city Chief of Staff Delen Goldberg said.
The Educational and Experimental Campus is being funded with a combination of grants, including Community Development Block Grants. Bureau of Land Management funding will be used for the park.
The project is aimed at helping revitalize the downtown area.
“It’s really about the holistic look of work, live play, all within walking distance of our residents,” Gavan said. “Frankly, for many years, this area was kind of ignored and now that’s changed in the last five, six years with all the new development and opportunity.”
